Editor's Note

The Charge

The Schmo must go on.

Opening Statement

Is it the fakest reality show ever? Or does its fakery make the reality
really, really real?

In the episode titled "The Pony Remark," Kramer told Seinfeld, in
patented Kramerian style, "levels, Jerry, levels." Though Kramer was
describing his idea to purge his furniture and build a series of shelves in his
house, he might as well have been talking about Joe Schmo and its
imaginatively titled sequel, Joe Schmo 2.

The levels of the initial Schmo comprised a delicate Napoleon in
which a regular guy who thought he was a contestant on a reality show was
actually a stooge, "competing" against actors playing the parts of the
other participants. Throughout the faux game, the actors and the crew had to
maintain the ruse to keep the schmo in the dark and prevent the whole conceit
from imploding. In Joe Schmo 2, the conceit is the same, but the stakes
are higher, as a female mark is added to compete on the show-within-the-show,
Last Chance for Love.

Facts of the Case

The nine episodes that comprise the season of Joe Schmo 2 impose a
weird sense of vertigo on viewers, forcing them to balance between real and
"real." With peeks inside production meetings—complete with
actors discussing the motivation and behavior of their stereotypical reality
show characters—alternating with what appear to be straight versions of
such reality show tropes as elimination ceremonies and direct-to-camera
confession segments, Joe Schmo 2 is a tricky blend of parody,
behind-the-curtain machinations, and competition. With so many conventions to
navigate, it's not surprising that the series is only moderately successful.

The Evidence

As any fan of SCTV or Christopher Guest can attest, parody is as delicate as
a soufflé, and just as challenging to create: go too broad with your
mockery of the conventions you're sending up and you might as well be Harvey
Korman shticking it up with Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show. Play it
too subtle, as Guest did with the songs written for A Mighty Wind, and you're paying tribute to
the form, not poking fun at it.

In the case of Joe Schmo 2, the issue is that the parody
components—ribald, suggestive, and some quite funny—get consumed by
the bigger issue of whether or not the two contestants will catch on to the
show's big con. If the form starts to overshadow the content, with questions of
the competition overwhelming the comedy woven through it, the entire production
becomes muddled and uncertain. A classic example of this is Norman Lear's
old-school late-night soap parody, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, in which
the subversive comedy on which the series was predicated ended up as an also-ran
to the serialized elements of the show.

Conceptually, Joe Schmo 2 is brilliant. The eleven actors, cast as
such reality show staples as "the weeper," "the hottie,"
"the playah," and "the gotta-be-gay guy," are uniformly
excellent; in maintaining their personae throughout their interaction with marks
Tim and Ingrid, and dropping it when talking about their characters in the
confessional segments, they give viewers a crash course in improvised comedy
acting and the thought process behind it.

Among the actors, Ralph Garman deserves special mention. As Derek Newcastle,
"the pompous host," Garman, looking like a less-unkempt Will Ferrell,
keeps the schmo rolling with droll readings of such hokey host-speak as
"Tonight, one of you will be thrown from love's luxury limo and into
rejection's beat-up hoopdy." With his frosted hair and sonorous intonation,
he doubles the entendre of everything from the schmo's pearl necklace ceremony
to the male vs. female sack and box competition.

One of the subtle ironies of Joe Schmo 2 is that, though contestants
Tim and Ingrid aren't professional performers, they are participants in a
reality show and, as such, are as aware as any of the actors of what's expected
of them performance-wise. It's not giving too much away to say that it's this
level of self-awareness that throws the production into a tailspin halfway
through the series and makes Joe Schmo 2 better than it has a right to
be.

From a technical standpoint, Mill Creek's presentation of Joe Schmo 2
is the polar opposite of the show itself, lacking any sense of invention or
cleverness. Video and audio are unsurprisingly standard, the disc contains no
scene selection option, and there are a mere three chapter stops for every
42-minute episode. In addition to those haphazard quirks, the packaging stands
out as extra chintzy: the set's two discs are housed in paper envelopes stuck
inside the plastic case.

Though I wouldn't have expected a raft of extras for a short-lived basic
cable show, I was sad to see there was no commentary track from the show's
creators. For a show with as many layers as Joe Schmo 2 boasts, it would
have been interesting to hear the writers and producers discuss the challenges
they faced in creating the show.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

True invention is hard to find on television, and within the subset of
"reality," it's damn near nonexistent. The genre that relies on
humiliation, backstabbing, gross behavior, and vulgar characterizations of
"real" people—whether they're housewives, fashion designers, or
unbridled procreators—is ripe for a shot of self-awareness, creativity,
and invention. Even though Joe Schmo 2 can't quite keep all its plates
spinning, the cast and crew deserve props for attempting to twist the
conventions of a cheesy genre into a clever Moebius strip of reality/comedy.

Closing Statement

For fans of improv comedy and inventive parody Joe Schmo 2 is a real
treat. It's no laugh riot but it is a quick, clever, well-executed send-up of
reality TV.